The Silent Deceivers

Chapter 1

No Choice

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, my life hasn’t been a total train wreck, don’t get me wrong but certain events have definitely diverted me down the wrong rail. Teenage years are meant to be discovering yourself and having fun right? Well I definitely had fun, so much fun I lost who I was completely. Only now a good few years later have I finally found that connecting pothole filled lane that has led me back to myself and only now can I begin to make my parents proud. I lost everything a few years ago and now from this moment forward I am going to work to get it back. What’s the first step? Easy; letting go of the past but not losing it completely!

The journey all started on the day of my Year 10 parents evening. I was dreading the moment my parents walked back through the front door. I had taken the opportunity to hide my phone, my iPod and my laptop so they couldn’t get taken away from me. I used to try my hardest to concentrate and get good grades but it never seemed to be good enough. I’m not the smartest cookie in the jar. Now I’ve accepted that academics are just not my thing and don’t give a monkeys about what I get.

School, never changed. I sat at the back in every class and I keep myself to myself. I never liked school, the only reason that I kept on attending that hell hole was a) I had no choice and b) my two best friends, Abby and Grace. We were never the popular girls and that was ok with us. We sort of fitted into the ‘rebel’ category. Our main mission of each school day was to take the mick out of the girls who thought they ran the place without them catching on and threatening to have their ‘daddy’s’ kick us out. Our attendance record was diabolical. We left as soon as the last bell rang, well on some days anyway. Most days we left right after afternoon registration. We would make sure that our form teacher saw us and when everyone else was heading to double physics or algebra we would walk, heads held high, down the front steps and out the dark blue, double iron gates. Every week we missed PE, I often wondered whether the coach even knew we existed. The whole idea of my arch enemies holding a hockey stick in their hands wasn’t exactly the most appealing. I was confident around my friends but in those classes I did attend I was shy, I was so afraid of being humiliated, and every time I was dragged into the spotlight I got out of it as quickly as possible. I knew what the teachers were going to say about me, sitting protected on the other side of the table in the stuffy crowded school dining hall that smelled of that day’s burnt lunch. “She’s too quiet. She needs to speak up more.” or “Leah would benefit much better from my tuition if she could be asked to actually turn up to my classes.” It was the same every year. 

The sound of my mum’s voice echoed up the stairs. They were home. I tried to pretend that I hadn’t heard her but it was no use, she just shouted louder. I took a deep breath, braced myself for the lecture about to come and trudged down into the living room. By the tone of her voice I knew it wasn’t something good. It never was.

I strolled casually into the living room and perched on the edge of the sofa. A few seconds lingered with icy glares being passed back and forth before my mum opened her mouth to start giving the same old lecture that I heard year in year out. It went a little something like this: School is important and you need to do well in school to get a good job. If you don’t get a good job you won’t get income and you will end up in cardboard box. You’re not sponging off us all your life. Put more bloody effort in and for god sake turn up, we are paying a lot for your education so stop being such a selfish cow and blah blah blah! This time I was lucky, before she could start the telephone rang. I smiled a smug smile. She glared at me and told me to stay exactly where I was as she walked to receive it, but I wasn’t planning on it. I jumped up and wandered casually over to the door leading to the kitchen and just as I was about to pull down the handle, the door opened and my Dad stood in front of me. He looked at me, signalled with his finger for me to turn around and then followed me into the living room. I sighed, no escape for me, I sat back down opposite him on the sofa. Mum came back five minutes later with a massive grin on her face. Dread washed over me. This was not good! Whatever made Mum happy never made me happy. In fact it almost always made me mad.